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The American Way of Writing About Death:
How newspaper obituaries serve readers and reflect society

"Almost every family will be touched in the course of a year by a death. It's a time when a newspaper comes off well or badly and people don't forget."
Joe Weiler, executive editor, Fort Wayne, Ind., News-Sentinel

Sarah Collins
Knight Foundation Copy-Editing Fellow
Department of Journalism and Mass Communication
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Fall semester, 1998
Dr. Donald Shaw, adviser



 

"I have figured out that I am (reading obituaries) not to obsess about death but to find out about life."
Suzanne Braun Levine
 

When the daily Brattleboro (Vt.) Reformer decided late in 1994 to start charging readers to place obituaries, the fallout was negative and strongly felt.

Readers canceled subscriptions, the managing editor publicly disavowed support for the new policy, and the decision to charge divided the company.

"Despite the outrage, officials at the Brattleboro Reformer say the policy is here to stay," Editor & Publisher writer Dorothy Giobbe stated in an Aug. 12, 1995, article about the controversy.

As it turns out, it wasn't.

When MediaNews Group bought the Reformer in mid-1995, MediaNews Chief Executive Officer Dean Singleton discontinued the practice of charging readers $50 to place obituaries. (Kept in place was a $25 fee to place reports of funeral or memorial services.)

Although Singleton-driven cuts in staff and resources spurred Stephen Fay to leave the Reformer, the paper's former managing editor applauded Singleton's decision to eliminate the obituary charge.

"It's one of the things I can say in his behalf," said Fay, now at the weekly Ellsworth (Maine) American.

THE PAY-TO-PLAY DILEMMA

Obituaries are the last record most people except the famous or infamous will leave upon this earth.
And until about the early 1980s, newspaper editors and obituary writers decided what details of these lives would see print.

As news, obituaries were held to the same standards as other editorial copy: timeliness, accuracy, length and relevance to the newspaper's readership.

Most newsrooms saw it as their charge to provide, for free, coverage of the deaths of readers or readers' close relatives. Basic obituaries included the deceased's age, residence, birthplace and place of employment, as well as the names of survivors. The death of an accomplished or prominent community member likely would rate a more detailed account, accompanied by a photograph and possibly placed on the front page.

Larger markets, such as the New York Times  and the Boston Globe,  were the exception. The papers' obituaries covered the deaths only of the more prominent: educators, statesmen, politicians, inventors and the like. For the families of average citizens, the only way to guarantee death coverage was to buy space in the newspapers' death notices.
More newspapers are following the lead of the Times and the Globe. Nine out of ten major newspapers charge for obituaries, Patrick MacDonald, publisher of the MacDonald Classified Service, told U.S. News & World Report  magazine in 1997. In a recent interview, MacDonald stood by this estimate and by his prediction that by 2000, all newspapers will charge for obituaries.

Tonda Rush, legal counsel for the National Newspaper Association, says paid obituaries became widespread in the early 1980s. More newspapers jumped on the bandwagon after newsprint prices rose sharply in the late 1980s and early 1990s, according to Rush. (The National Newspaper Association represents weekly and small daily newspapers.)

A PERSONAL VIEW

I became a regular reader of obituaries by necessity when I became a copy editor at the daily Kennebec Journal in Augusta, Maine. Editing obituaries is as much a part of the job as designing the local section front or choosing stories for a package of news briefs.

At first, however, none of the obituaries held my attention for any longer than it took to check their spelling, grammar and accuracy. Then I began to notice the details of these largely unsung lives. "What would it have been like," I would muse, "to have taken my first job at the age of 14, in a factory where they made high-button shoes?" To have outlived three husbands? To have traveled to China as a missionary? To have designed and built my own solar-heated home?
I have realized that even in my hometown, I will never be invited behind most of the front doors that I pass. I can, however, enter the lives of people I will never meet, simply by reading the local newspaper and discovering, from their obituaries, where they worked, worshipped and attended school, and whether they raised children or completed military service.

Read and analyzed, obituaries bear witness to our societal shifts. At the small daily where I work, a World War II veteran's obituary is a nightly staple of the job, often accompanied by a half-century-old photograph of a fresh-faced young man in a uniform.

Any number of editorials and analyses address our transition from a manufacturing to a service economy. To understand the impact this has had on real people's lives, peruse the obituaries and count the numbers of the deceased who had been employed at shoe factories or textile mills for upwards of 20 years. Many of these factories now are closed, and the children of the people who had worked in these places will not be leading the lives that their parents may have envisioned for them.

Obituaries themselves also have changed. Some smaller newspapers that once had printed obituaries of area residents and their relatives for free now charge a fee for doing so. Editors at these newspapers say that not only are they acknowledging marketplace realities, such as the cost of printing a newspaper, they also are meeting the need of readers to have more control over the content of their loved ones' obituaries. For their part, editors working for newspapers that do not charge for obituaries say that charging for obituaries undermines the obituaries' function as items of record and alienates readers.

Over the fall 1998 semester at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I read close to 1,800 obituaries in four daily newspapers: the Providence (R.I.) Journal-Bulletin; Albany (N.Y.) Times Union; Raleigh (N.C.) News & Observer; and Durham (N.C.) Herald-Sun. I also interviewed editors and other staff members at the Herald-Sun; Kennebec Journal; News & Observer; Chapel Hill (N.C.) News; Greensboro (N.C.) News & Record; Rockland, Maine Courier-Gazette and Spring Hope  (N.C.)  Enterprise, as well as the publisher and the former editor of the Brattleboro (Vt.) Reformer.

I addressed several aspects of obituary writing and obituary policy in my report:

Obituaries and how they reflect the culture at large
Obituaries and how they treat sensitive information
Obituary mistakes
Paid vs. free obituaries: Editors speak out
A newspaper that went paid and then went back
Conclusions and recommendations for editors
 

OBITUARIES AND SOCIAL HISTORY

Obituaries have a utilitarian function: to document the community. They are an important (and well-read) part of the news record, particularly in smaller towns and cities, where people know and like to keep track of their neighbors. Furthermore, obituaries have significance long after they are published, for they are a source of information for historians and researchers.

At the minimum, I expect obituaries to include the name of the deceased, his age, where he lived, where he died and the names of any survivors.

During my research, I was surprised at the number of obituaries I read that did not include the age of the deceased. Granted, out of the 1,730 obituaries I read, only 58 did not list the deceased's age, so the practice obviously is not widespread. That a newspaper would print any obituary without this information, however, shows there is a struggle between showing sensitivity to the family and showing respect for the news value of the obituary.

Some might argue that a newspaper has no business asking family members to provide more information than they offered to the funeral home. If we let this standard guide us in other areas of news-gathering, we would print only press releases. It is obvious that the death of a loved one is an occasion during which a family should be treated with respect and compassion. Editors and newsroom clerks know, or can be instructed, to exercise these attributes while gathering the information needed for a minimally complete death record.

One also might be taken aback at the realization that of the 58 obituaries in which the age of the deceased was not mentioned, 40 of these obituaries recorded the deaths of women. This was the most prevalent in the News & Observer: Out of 318 obituaries surveyed, 17 obituaries did not include a woman's age. (Eleven men's obituaries did not include the age of the deceased.)

This project is not the forum in which to discuss how society treats women as they grow older, or whether Southern women are more sensitive than their Northern counterparts to the revelation of their age.  One is left to wonder, however, why the family felt it necessary to omit the age of the deceased. One's age is a fact. It doesn't reflect well or badly on a person; it just is. To leave it out of an obituary implies that aging is something to hide and it draws more attention to the obituary than if the age at death were mentioned in a matter-of-fact manner.

There is another significant omission. Considering the prevalence of divorce and remarriage one out of two marriages in the United States ends in divorce obituaries make relatively little mention of these events. A simple sentence such as "Mr. Smith's first marriage ended in divorce. He was survived by his wife, Helen..." both makes for a more accurate record of the deceased's life and closes off one avenue of speculation.
 

A STABLE SOCIETY

The society depicted in these obituaries is a stable one: not only do residents hold the same jobs for years or even decades, they also stay in, or near, the same communities and lend significant amounts of time to local charitable, service, fraternal and church organizations.

Among the most surprising findings was the discovery that of the 776 women whose obituaries were read for my survey, 400 had held jobs outside the home. I had assumed that the large-scale entrance of women into the workplace dated no further back than the late 1970s or early 1980s. Before that, I had thought, most women did not work outside the home, except if they were widowed and supporting children or if they were contributing to the World War II effort.
Women traditionally have dominated the professions of teaching, nursing, library science and secretarial work, and my informal obituary research supports this: I would estimate that of the professions represented in women's obituaries, at least half fall into one of the above four categories.

Judging from the information provided in obituaries, teachers and, to a lesser extent, librarians seemed to identify with their jobs more than nurses or secretaries did. It was not uncommon to read of a woman who had worked as a teacher for more than 30 years. Educators' obituaries often traced their professional footsteps, such as the number of years they spent at a particular school and the grade levels of the students they taught there. Obituaries also cited teachers' involvement in unions and in associations of professional retirees.

One teacher even inspired a news story article marking her death. An April 1, 1998, News & Observer article discussed the life and career of Dorothy Smith Lane, a 45-year Raleigh elementary schoolteacher who died at the age of 100. Lane talked about her profession in a book about life in Raleigh's African-American communities, and one of her quotes is cited in the News & Observer  story: "I taught school and I loved it, and if I were a little bit younger, I would teach now. We did things and they would learn, because I did not believe in just sitting down. We never sat." The story also notes the contributions Lane made to her church and to the numerous organizations for which she had volunteered.

By contrast, the obituaries for women who worked as nurses and secretaries were more likely to mention their professions in passing. (It must be said that two different Rhode Island women made use of their credentials in the Army Nurses Corps in World War II, and each was discharged at the rank of first lieutenant.) Perhaps this is because nurses and secretaries have lower public profiles than teachers do, or because the sorts of bookish students who remember their teachers fondly go on to become newspaper writers and editors. Teachers also seemed to have more professional autonomy, especially when one considers that several secretaries' obituaries mention them in relation to the doctor or lawyer who employed them.

The obituaries also are a good place to find women who were pioneers. A 68-year-old Rhode Island woman was one of the first women in the state to maintain a law practice, according to her obituary. A 72-year-old physician was the first woman in Durham, N.C., to practice in the fields of hematology and oncology. A woman who died at the age of 60 the regional coordinator of the North Carolina Council on the Status of Women was the first woman to serve on the Craven County Commission.

In terms of sheer numbers of working women, there was a large disparity between the North and the South. Of the women whose deaths were recorded in the Providence and Albany newspapers, 298 had worked outside the home, as compared to 102 female jobholders cited in Durham and Raleigh newspaper obituaries. Perhaps this is evidence of a lingering Southern stigma against women in the workforce. I also speculate that the difference may be this: The Northern population has a higher proportion of immigrants, and families who had just arrived in the United States from Italy or Portugal needed both parents' paychecks in order to survive. This is a theory, but I would be interested to see if a more scientific analysis would support it.
 

LIFELONG TENURE

Not only has my informal obituary survey emphasized to me that women have been a workplace presence for a long time, it also has let me know that both men and women traditionally have remained with the same employers for several decades.

In the Albany area, enough people have worked for General Electric for a long enough period of time to support a GE Quarter-Century Club. The subjects of other Times Union obituaries worked 28 years for Mohawk Carpet Mills; owned a gas station for 20 years; worked for a quarter-century for the Troy District Shirt Co.; and spent 30 years working for the state's Department of Labor. A 40-year waiter supported a wife and five children. A 94-year-old woman's obituary mentioned that she had taught Latin and English for 46 years.

Residents of Providence, Raleigh and Durham have shown similar workplace loyalty. One obituary cites an 83-year-old man's 37-year tenure as a chauffeur at Cranston (R.I.) Print Works. A blacksmith owned a forge in Rhode Island for 50 years. An obituary in the Durham Herald-Sun noted carefully that the deceased had managed a JC Penney store for 36-and-a-half years. A 38-year Durham firefighter retired with the rank of captain, and a widow spent 26 years as the secretary for a lieutenant governor of North Carolina.

At the same time that obituaries track the passing of community residents, they also record the demise of some industries. In Maine, some now-defunct shoe and clothing factories receive newspaper publicity only in the context of their having employed someone who now is dead. Similarly, obituaries for Rhode Island residents in their 70s, 80s and 90s refer to their having worked at the former Berkshire Hathaway textile mill. Hand-presser, doffer, spinner, dyeing manager, garment trimmer, loom fixer all these jobs meant security and a living wage to immigrants from Portugal and Quebec.
Some of these obituaries are educational, such as that  of a 71-year-old Rhode Island man noted that he had "worked for Firestone Rubber and Latex for 29 years until its closing in 1972."  Others give a glimpse of a world that doesn't exist anymore: An 86-year-old Rhode Island woman had worked as a hatter, and a dietitian in North Carolina once had played piano at silent movies.

Many of the obituaries in the North Carolina newspapers record the deaths of people who worked for tobacco companies, such as American Tobacco and Liggett & Myers. As I write, the attorneys general for eight states, including North Carolina, are said to be completing a $200 billion agreement that would impose regulations on the tobacco industry and settle 36 state lawsuits against the industry. This settlement is evidence along with bans on smoking in restaurants and workplaces of the growing political power of anti-smoking forces. In 100 years, will the phrase "worked for the American Tobacco Co." look like as much of an anachronism in an obituary as a reference to a hattery does today?
 

COMMUNITY ROOTS

About nine out of every ten obituaries in this survey contained a reference to the deceased's membership in an organization. An incomplete listing includes:

service or fraternal organizations: Elks, Rotary and Lions clubs; Masonic temples, Order of Eastern Star chapters, Moose Lodges;
high school or college alumni organizations;
volunteer fire or rescue squads, and their auxiliaries;
Grange chapters;
Jewish, Baptist, Lutheran, Congregationalist, Methodist, Episcopal, Presbyterian, Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic congregations, as well as clubs and committees within those congregations;
Parent-Teacher Association, Boy Scouting, Girl Scouting;
Little League;
Art and music appreciation societies;
Tenants' associations;
Veterans of Foreign Wars, Disabled American Veterans, American Legion and their auxiliaries;
Town and city government (boards and commissions);
Meals on Wheels, crisis hotlines, homeless shelters, soup kitchens;
American Association of Retired Persons and organizations for retirees in a particular profession, such as teachers and telephone company workers;
Ethnic associations.

Volunteerism has attracted a lot of attention over the last few years. The 1997 Presidents' Summit on America's Future promoted the merits of donating one's time to a nonprofit organization, particularly an agency that helps young people. Private, for-profit companies tout formal workplace volunteer programs. And the average American donates four hours a week to a charitable organization, according to a Gallup poll cited in an April 21, 1998, Raleigh News & Observer  story.
Although company-sponsored volunteer placement programs are commendable, aspects of this corporate involvement speak to me of a change in American life that is not necessarily for the better.  As I read the obituaries, I perceive that Americans in the past took for granted a certain level of volunteerism. One man's obituary in the Durham Herald-Sun noted that he had belonged to the Masons for 74 years, and a different obituary lauded a 94-year-old man as the oldest member of his town's volunteer fire department.

Involvement in mainstream churches and church-sponsored organizations was higher. The parents of today's baby boomers were PTA officers or Boy Scout troop leaders. Returning veterans filled American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars posts, as well as organizations for American veterans of Irish, Polish, Italian or Lithuanian descent.
Not to paint too Norman Rockwell-style a picture: Certainly, some high-profile organizations must have counted on status-seekers to swell their ranks. Some societal changes, furthermore, have been for the better. For example, I cite the obituary of a Rhode Island man who held several offices within a chapter of Narcotics Anonymous. Until relatively recently, this man would not have had a forum in which to discuss his struggle with drug addiction, to say nothing of declaring in the public arena of the obituary page that he had belonged to a group of former addicts.

Still, it would not be for the benefit of society if we were to abandon contributing to the public welfare in favor of self-rehabilitation.

A case in point can be found in a Jan. 22, 1998, Portland (Maine) Press Herald article about the efforts of small-town volunteer firefighting organizations to replenish their ranks.

One Maine fire department had as many volunteers over 60 as under 30, and no junior firefighters ages 15 to 20 belonged to the squad, the story said. In one town, fire calls used to draw several dozen volunteers; the average turnout today has dropped to fewer than 13.

"Nowadays, dual working couples are the norm, not the exception. As mills and factories close in small towns, people now travel farther to their jobs, leaving towns with a shortage of volunteers who are close by during daylight hours," the reporter wrote.

The story goes on to discuss measures to attract potential volunteer firefighters: fliers, videotapes and toll-free telephone numbers. As more people change jobs, relocate or accept company transfers, perhaps some volunteer-dependent groups will have to use similar tactics, combined with a nudge from corporate-sponsored programs, to attract new members.  In any case, the scenario leaves little room for a man, or a woman, to devote three-quarters of a century to one community organization.
 

A SENSE OF PLACE

As a lifelong resident of New England, I was struck immediately by how often obituaries in the News & Observer and Herald-Sun identified the deceased as a resident of a given county, not as the resident of a town or a city. I started to assume that this was a difference between Northerners and Southerners. Much as I kept track of the number of deceased people who had belonged to the Daughters of the Confederacy or had worked for a cigarette manufacturer with an eye toward saying, "That's the way they do things in the South" I kept track of the number of obituaries with the phrase "a native of _____ County."

A sociology professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill gave me a different idea. Dr. John Reed, whose specialty is Southern culture, suggested that what I am seeing may denote a difference between rural and urban societies, rather than between Southern and Northern ones.

"The South didn't really have much urban population for a long time (we passed the 50 percent mark only around 1960), and for most Southerners the nearest town was the county seat and the salient government was the county sheriff," Reed wrote to me.

A perusal of the obituaries in a publication serving an urban population the Providence Journal-Bulletin would seem to add some weight to Dr. Reed's argument. In the Journal-Bulletin, it would have been out of place for an obituary to note the county in which the deceased had been born or had lived. Everyone mentioned in an obituary had lived in a town or a city, and, in fact, it was not uncommon for an obituary to note the name of the particular neighborhood in which the deceased had resided.

The world according to the obituary page is a settled one, in which people did not uproot themselves very often. Indeed, a Herald-Sun obituary told of a family that had been in Johnston County, North Carolina, long enough that the place where they settled was named after them: the last name of the deceased was McGee, and his hometown was McGee's Crossroads.

In this universe, a family's changes in residence are a carefully tracked piece of family history even moves as relatively small as a relocation to a community several miles down the road. A Journal-Bulletin obituary recorded the death of a man who had lived in Attleboro, Mass., for 28 years, followed by a 17-year stint in North Attleboro. (I am reminded of the Maine man who was asked if he had lived in the town of Nobleboro all his life. "Gosh, no," was the shocked reply. "I was born in North Nobleboro.")
 

DEATH: THE LAST TABOO

The obituaries I read discussed the lives of the deceased in differing degrees of detail. Some take only a few sentences to set down the "minimally complete death record" I mentioned above. Others relate that the deceased was an Eagle Scout who earned more than 50 merit badges, or twice was elected president of the Garden Club.

But there is one aspect of life about which most newspaper obituaries still are silent: the cause of death. During my research, only 19 obituaries mentioned why the subject of the obituary had died. The careful reader sometimes can discern clues from the use of the words "long illness" (often a euphemism for cancer), or directions to make donations in the deceased's memory to a particular charity. "Died unexpectedly at home" could mean that the deceased committed suicide or had a heart attack.

Because so few obituaries are straightforward about the cause of death, those that are frank catch my eye. Obituaries that list the cause of death as cancer make me think about the process of terminal illness and reflect favorably on the hospice movement and its role in helping the whole family through a death. Obituaries of AIDS patients make me catch my breath, because the deceased usually is relatively young.

A pair of obituaries in the Providence Journal-Bulletin emphasized the random nature of death. A 51-year-old man died in a 1995 car crash, which also resulted in the deaths of his daughter, age 25, and two of her three children, ages 5 and six months. (The third child had survived with serious injuries.)

This particular accident wiped out nearly a whole young family. This was not, moreover, the family's first experience with accidental death: The daughter's husband had died in a 1992 car collision, according to the woman's obituary.  From the dry account of the deaths of several ordinary people, the reader is left to wonder about the life of the one remaining child, and to ponder the impact a similar accident would have on his own family.

Although the Kennebec Journal was not part of my research,  I would like to cite a recent Kennebec Journal obituary as an example of one family's courage. The obituary plainly stated that the deceased, a 58-year-old man, had died "after a courageous five-year battle with cancer, which was directly related to cigarette smoking."  No judgment was implied; in fact, the rest of the obituary depicted the deceased as a family man who loved his dog, attended church and enjoyed playing cribbage.

An April 1, 1998, Herald-Sun obituary of a retired chemistry teacher took a similarly frank approach, combined with a sense of humor that is rarely seen in the obituary pages.  "As she put it, she had 87 excellent years, but year 88 was just plain awful, consumed by a losing battle with lung cancer," the obituary stated in its opening paragraph. After a brief biography and a list of survivors, the obituary concluded with a loving but irreverent reference to the disposition of the deceased's remains: "Heloise's ashes will be placed next to those of her husband at the Conklin family cemetery near Greenport, N.Y., where she will join Conklins with marked graves going back to 1738, and with older graves going back to when Conklin was spelled in ways which no current human could possibly pronounce."
 

SERVING THE PUBLIC

We have seen that obituaries have an important part to play in recording the everyday activities of a community: where people live, where they work, where they worship and how they spend their spare time.

 Does asking the public to pay for a newspaper obituary enhance or undermine the function of the obituary? Journalism professionals take firmly divergent stances on either side of the question, and each insists that doing it his way is the better way to serve the public.

Editors at publications that run free obituaries say theirs is the only way to retain the news value for obituaries and to give all their readers equal, unpaid access to the obit page. The primary motivation for running paid obituaries is financial, these editors insist, and deciding to charge for obituaries places a barrier between readers and their source of news.
Newspapers that publish paid obituaries say that the loss of room for news and the rising cost of newsprint left them with few alternate means of raising revenue. It's nothing new to charge for obituaries, they say: Big-city newspapers have done so for years.

Furthermore, they counter, charging for obituaries allows readers, not editors, to shape the content of their loved ones' death records.

Echoing his counterparts at several other newspapers, a North Carolina editor cited newsprint costs as the impetus for the move to paid obituaries.

"The change came about during the era of soaring newsprint prices, and the reality was that (charging for obituaries) was a way to make up some of the expense without raising the rates for advertisers," said William Hawkins, executive editor at the Durham Herald-Sun.

At Central Maine Newspapers, publisher of two small Maine dailies, a lagging economy sparked the change.
In the early 1990s, a recession hit the area hard and advertising revenues began to decline, said Stephanie Law, then a copy editor and now the newspapers' copy desk chief.

"We were looking for ways to increase our income, but not by doing things other newspapers didn't do," Law said. At that time, the Bangor Daily News  was the only Maine daily to publish paid obituaries.

And it was obvious that readers wanted to include more information in their loved ones' obituaries than newsroom guidelines would allow, recalled Law. Readers sought to create a fuller picture of the dead, one that took into account the deceased's fondness for a pet cat or passion for crocheting.

"We would name children, spouses and parents. We didn't put in grandchildren's names, or even list the sons-in-law," Law said. "There were a lot of things we realized people wanted and weren't getting in."

Area funeral directors supported this view when they found out that CMN planned to start charging for obituaries, Law said. The company publishes the Kennebec Journal  in Augusta, and the Central Maine Morning Sentinel, 20 miles north in Waterville.

At a meeting with company representatives held just before the new policy went into effect funeral directors said their customers often had expressed frustration at the editing of obituaries, according to Law.

Many newspapers rely on funeral homes to provide obituary information. The decision to print obituaries largely as written meant undertakers didn't have to field complaints over the omission of a favorite son-in-law or list of county-fair awards from the account of a loved one's life. And that made them happy.

Readers also embraced the new policy, according to Law, who saw no dropoff in the length or number of obituaries. Although the newspapers charge a minimum of $35 for seven inches of obituary copy and $5 an inch thereafter "people don't try to keep (obituaries) at seven inches," Law said.

The reaction was somewhat different at the Herald-Sun, where staffers said they saw a drop immediately after the shift.
When the Herald-Sun decided in May 1995 to start charging $20 per column inch for placing obituaries, the reaction from readers was immediate, strong and negative, according to Bo Bryan, classified advertising manager. The newspaper's older readers were among the most incensed, Bryan said, because they felt as though the Herald-Sun were being disloyal to them. "A lot of people couldn't understand why they had to pay for obituaries when they'd been subscribers for 30 to 40 years," Bryan said.

Despite the tone of the initial response, however, the newspaper did make a recovery, said the executive editor of the Herald-Sun.

"There may have been an initial dip, but at this point, (the number of obituaries) is pretty much the same (as before the change)," William Hawkins said. "Today (Sept. 1, 1998), for example, we have 19 obituaries."
 

WHO HANDLES OBITUARIES?

Making a family member's death known to members of the community is important enough that the relatives of the deceased are willing to set aside some money to do so, editors say.

"I've never had a call from someone saying they didn't have the money to place an obituary with us," Hawkins said.
Still, the Herald-Sun  realizes that not every reader has the means to pay for an obituary, and the newspaper does not charge readers for placing the first two column inches of an obituary, Bo Bryan said. This policy allows every reader enough space to state the most basic details of the death, such as the name of the deceased, where he had lived, and the date, time and location of the funeral service, without requiring the reader to spend money to record the death, according to the classified advertising manager.

Customers "have gotten accustomed to it," said Alvin Loftin, obituary department manager for the News & Observer. "They realize it's part of the funeral expense." The News & Observer charges readers $3 a line to place an obituary, with a $20 charge for an additional photograph.

Who handles paid obituaries differs among newspapers. At the Charlotte Observer  (seven lines for free, $2 per line after that); Greensboro News & Record  (seven lines for free the first time the obituary runs; $1.95 per line after that); News & Observer and Herald-Sun, the classified advertising department handles obituary copy. The Herald-Sun  newsroom does lay out and paginate the obituary page, however, and the night city editor at the News & Record reads obituaries "to see if they rate a news follow," Metro Editor Tom Corrigan said.

At Central Maine Newspapers, copy editors lay out and paginate obituary pages. They also read obituaries to make sure they meet standards of grammar and factual accuracy. In each newspaper's newsroom, a news clerk collects obituaries, types them (or downloads the e-mailed copy of the obituary) and calls the funeral home with any questions.

Reader-crafted obituaries easily can be distinguished by their diversity. Details of a person's life that do not meet strict news criteria will find a home on a page where all the column inches are paid for.

"Mr. Courtney was the first scoutmaster of B.S.A. Troop #29. After 54 years, Troop #29 is still an active, viable troop," the News & Observer printed in the Sept. 11, 1998, obituary of a Williamston, N.C., merchant.

Other obituaries on the same page note the names of one deceased man's ten grandchildren; state that another "left for Heaven Wednesday morning with family around him"; and list each office a third man held in a local church or civic organization, year by year. A news-driven obituary would look somewhat different. It likely would mention, but not name, the grandchildren; say simply that the obituary subject "died"; and give a brief synopsis of the deceased's civic involvement, without listing each committee on which he served.

The obituary of a racer and breeder of Morgan horses stood out on one Kennebec Journal obituary page: the deceased and a representative of his favorite breed were pictured in a one-column photograph that ran with the obituary.

Obituary photographs usually run thumbnail size, but since the family was willing to pay extra money for the larger photo, "this gave (relatives) a chance to make something that was definitely memorable," Stephanie Law said.

"Many readers would now find obits more interesting because they're more personalized," said Hawkins of the Herald-Sun. "To some extent that balances the tradeoff of being news-driven but terribly dry."
 

MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE

Unlike their counterparts at newspapers that charge for obituaries, editors at newspapers with free-obituary policies say they have the freedom to ask questions if the information in the obituary seems incomplete.

When Central Maine Newspapers obituaries ran free of charge, the obituary of someone who had committed suicide "was considered a news item," Stephanie Law said. A copy editor who suspected a suicide would call Maine's state medical examiner, ask for the cause of death, and include the information in the deceased's obituary, said Law.

The death of a young person would raise a red flag, Law said, as would the phrase "died unexpectedly at his home."
Now the newspapers do not include the cause of death in their paid obituaries, unless the family of the deceased has mentioned it.

By contrast, the untimely, unexplained death of a young person was the catalyst for further investigation at the Chapel Hill News.

Publisher Ted Vaden cited an obituary of a young man who had suffered from "serious depression."

The deceased "wasn't identified as a suicide, but we knew the person was a suicide," Vaden said. "We called the family and said we were considering publishing the cause of death."

The family eventually agreed to allow the newspaper to print that the young man had taken his own life. The decision had positive repercussions, Vaden said: The deceased's father wrote a column about depression and its effects on his son, sparking discussion on the topic within the community.

"The family felt like he hadn't died in vain," Vaden said.

Some deaths make news stories, either because of the status of the deceased or because of the way he died. If a person of some prominence dies, Vaden said, a Chapel Hill News reporter will gather background information and solicit quotes about the deceased. This information, combined with the basic facts of the subject's death, combines to form a "news obituary."

A newspaper has a responsibility to make sure an obituary and a news story jibe, Michael McGuire said.

For example, on the same day the Courier-Gazette plans to run an account of a fatal car accident, the newspaper likely would receive an obituary of the victim. If this account does not mention the cause of death, a Courier-Gazette editor would ask the participating funeral home to help make the case for a respectful, but candid, presentation of the facts.
"We try to explain the importance of being accurate and not changing history," said McGuire.
 

WHAT'S NEWS?

Does charging for obituaries negate the function of the newspaper as a news-gathering entity?

No, it does not, said Central Maine Newspapers' Stephanie Law. CMN copy editors have as much control over the fairness and accuracy of obituaries as they do over other news coverage, she said.

Granted, paid CMN obituaries do include editorial comments or statements on the deceased's loyalty to a political cause information that likely would be cut from a free obituary. The newspapers' copy editors have the authority, however, to remedy mistakes in spelling, grammar and punctuation. As well, the editors correct factual errors.

"I don't think the fact of charging for the space (obituaries) occupy constitutes an advertising function," Law said.
"Obituaries still are an item of record, and as such are part of the information we provide our readers. We are not selling a product or service through their publication; we are providing information," she added.

The Chicago Commission on Human Relations made a similar argument in a ruling clearing the Chicago Tribune of sex bias in its handling of death notices.

"Tim Marback brought the case after the newspaper refused to run a death notice for his mother in a way that would indicate Steven Hillyer was Marback's spouse," according to an article in the March 14, 1998, Editor & Publisher magazine.

When Marback's mother died, Marback wanted to buy a death notice that would include his name in the list of survivors, with an accompanying reference to Hillyer as his spouse. Marback refused to purchase a death notice that would conform to Tribune style and refer to Hillyer as his "life partner" or "companion," and then brought a claim of bias against the Tribune.

Marback's attorneys argued that the Tribune's death notices "are commercial speech with only limited First Amendment protections," E&P said.

In response, the Tribune cited its "absolute First Amendment right" to edit death notices, an argument that the commission supported.

"(The) Tribune's death notices provide news," commission chairman Clarence Wood wrote. "They do not propose a commercial transaction; they impart information who died; who that person's survivors are; what the funeral or memorial arrangements are. They are no less news by virtue of the fact they are bought and sold."
 

LEGITIMATE NEWS IS FREE

Others, however, would disagree with the commission's ruling.

Requiring that readers pay for obituaries takes control of obituaries out of the hands of the newsroom and blurs the line between news and advertising, several past and present editors say.

"I despise the trend (of charging for obituaries) we become printers, and not newspapers," said Ken Ripley, editor and publisher of the weekly Spring Hope (N.C.) Enterprise. Ripley also suggests that editors who say they don't have enough room to print, for free, every obituary they receive could address this dilemma by limiting the length of obituaries.
"This pay-for-news trend changes the longtime rule in our business that legitimate news is free; that you don't need financial means to get a newsworthy story in the paper," William Ketter wrote in a December 1995 column for The American Editor, the monthly publication of the American Society of Newspaper Editors.  ASNE president in 1995 and 1996, Ketter recently resigned as executive editor of the Quincy (Mass.) Patriot-Ledger and is now an op-ed editor for the Boston Globe.

By charging for obituaries, newspapers have abdicated their responsibility to cover the lives of their readers, Ketter said in his column.

Ketter suggested that reporters assume more of the responsibility for covering deaths in the community, a task that most newspapers whether or not they charge for obituaries have turned over to funeral directors and news clerks.
"I don't buy the rationale that paid obituaries are far more interesting than newsroom versions because the authors can say funny, even quirky things about the deceased," Ketter said.

"That, more than anything, is an admission we've abandoned our responsibility to present news in an interesting way to our readers," he added. "If there are fascinating tales behind the obituaries, we should be finding them and reporting them."
 

CHARGING FOR NEWS?

Editors at publications that offer free obituaries believe running paid obituaries offers no advantage to a newspaper and plenty of disadvantages.

"It's a short distance from (charging for obituaries) to charging for any news," said Ripley of the Enterprise. "Are we going to start asking people to pay to put in a picture of their son when he becomes an Eagle Scout?"

The death of a member of the community or of someone related to a local resident is a news event, Ripley and several other editors maintain, and the newsroom has a responsibility to make sure that obituaries are as complete and accurate as any other news account.

Newspapers that print free obituaries publish basic information about the deceased: his name, where he was born, when he was born, when he died and the names of surviving family members.

What other information is included depends on the standards of the newspaper.

For example, obituaries in the Enterprise and in the thrice-weekly Chapel Hill News will not list the names of the deceased's grandchildren, nieces or nephews. In the thrice-weekly Courier-Gazette, however, obituaries do include the names of survivors who are not members of the immediate family, Courier Executive Editor Michael McGuire said.
"I strongly feel it's important for obituaries to reflect a person's life," McGuire said. "I don't have a problem even with including the names of (the deceased's) nieces or nephews, because sometimes they're the sole survivors."
A daily evening newspaper in Fort Wayne, Ind., has found increased popularity with a similar policy.
The News-Sentinel  has doubled the space for its free obituaries from three-quarters of a page to 1.5 pages a day, according to a story in the September 1998 issue of Presstime.

The newspaper allows readers to add 15 words to the basic biographical data presented in the obituary. The policy gives readers leeway to personalize the obituary by noting the deceased's hobbies, for example, or by adding the names of grandchildren to the list of survivors.

Executive Editor Joe Weiler said he has received many positive comments about the new policy.
"Almost every family will be touched in the course of a year by a death," Weiler told Presstime. "It's a time when a newspaper comes off well or badly and people don't forget."
 

A CONTROVERSIAL DECISION

At the Brattleboro Reformer in Vermont, declining revenues forced newspaper to institute an obituary fee, the Reformer's then-general manager, Richard Macko, told Editor & Publisher. He defended the policy as a common practice at the nation's larger dailies.
"We knew we would catch hell for the (obit) policy, but we would rather do that than lay people off," Giobbe quoted Macko, who is now the newspaper's publisher. "(B)eing faced with the dollars and cents of the business, it was inevitable."

Both Macko and Stephen Fay, the former managing editor, characterized the Reformer's original obituary policy as liberal. For free, the newspaper had printed extended lists of survivors including the names of grandchildren and nieces and nephews, which often are excised from unpaid obituaries and information about the deceased's club memberships and hobbies. Obituaries were cut only if their length made them unwieldy, according to Fay.

"Going paid" was a corporate decision made in an effort to cut costs and make the newspaper more attractive to potential buyers, Fay said.

However, the move didn't endear the newspaper to readers. Fifty people wrote to criticize the newspaper, and 10 readers canceled their subscriptions.

One reader "accused the Reformer of attempting to 'balance the books on the backs of widows and orphans,' " Giobbe wrote.

Fay wasn't far behind, Giobbe reported: He wrote a column that took a stand against the new practice.
"Eagle Publishing did not start charging for obits in order to get rich; it did so to stay above water," Fay wrote.
"All of us in the newsroom argued against it, but because we do not make the rules we must live with the policy, however uneasily. Charging for obituaries seems unnatural to us ..."
 

'FANNING THE FLAMES'

Macko said he could understand the tone of the readers' response to the obituary charge: "It shouldn't have been unexpected, because it was a change in a small community."

The newsroom's public stance on the topic, however, incensed Macko. The decision to run a column outlining the newsroom's opposition to the fee "fanned the flames of the objections to it" and contributed to divisions within the company, said the Reformer executive.

The newsroom was the only department within the Reformer that had a public venue to express its feelings about the obituary policy, but newsroom employees were not the only ones who opposed the fee, Fay replied.  Other Reformer staff members also expressed resentment.

In fact,  according to Fay, advertising and composing room employees may have taken the most heat from readers, simply because they have stronger ties to the community than do editors and reporters, who tend to be more transient.
By implementing an obituary fee, Fay said, the Reformer went out on a limb: Neither newspapers in surrounding towns nor the others in the Eagle Publishing Group chain levied an obituary charge.

The timing of the charge made it a last straw for Reformer employees, according to Fay: "This came in the context of 'one thing after another': drug testing, layoffs, total quality management (and) elimination of a Christmas bonus."
 

AN EDITOR RESIGNS

The brouhaha over the obituary policy, however, was not the catalyst for Fay's decision to seek other employment, he said.

Under the controversial Dean Singleton, who bought the Reformer in 1995, the newspaper cut staff to the point where Fay alone was responsible for laying out and choosing stories for Monday editions. "I couldn't work like that," he said.
The silver lining, in Fay's eyes, was Singleton's decision to eliminate the obituary charge. The Reformer's current owner "saw less of a need to get revenue from that source," Richard Macko said.

Still, standards for Reformer obituaries are tighter than they were prior to the implementation of the fee. For example, Macko said, "We don't list every grandchild by name only if they were the only survivors."
Down the road, could the fee again find favor at the Reformer?

Said Macko: "We have not entertained the idea of charging it again."
 

THE IMPORTANCE OF ACCURACY

 An editor once told me that if you misspell a reader's name in a story, he won't believe anything else you write. Although no mistake is a welcome one, little touches a reader more directly than seeing his name, or that of a loved one, connected with mistaken information in print.

"It's the last time a person's name will be in the paper. You have to get the facts right," John Nick, wire and obituary editor for the Sun City (Ariz.) Daily News-Sun, told the Associated Press in 1996.

Furthermore, people who handle obituaries must try to obtain highly sensitive information about the subject at a time when the most obvious sources members of the deceased's family may feel ill-equipped to field questions about an obituary. Therefore, it is easy for some information to slip through the cracks inadvertently.

Longtime Sharon, Pa., Herald obituary writer Anne Goda, now retired, told the newspaper in a 1996 story that she made an error when she wrote her own spouse's obituary. "It's so easy to forget something when you're upset and you're experiencing grief," said Goda. "The ironic thing is I forgot my husband belonged to a union."

John Nick wrote his father's obituary and keeps a framed copy of it at home, according to the Associated Press story. He is not the only person who feels protective about his loved one's death record, according to another journalist, Sharon Herald  Editor James Raykie.

Relatives "clip (the obituary). They save it. They laminate it. They mail it to friends," Raykie said in a May 1996 Herald  story.

As years pass, obituaries become part of a family's history. At the Courier-Gazette, former community news editor David Grima can remember talking with an acquaintance who had deep roots in the Rockland, Maine, area. The man had saved decades-old Courier obituaries of his relatives, written in a florid style that was a sharp contrast to the more news-oriented tone of today's Courier  death accounts.
 

'A 35-EAR RESIDENT'

Many of the mistakes I saw in my research were classic typos, such as spelling mistakes, errors in capitalization, and omitted, transposed or added letters.

While not every error changes the meaning of the copy, they all make the newspaper look sloppy and leave the family with an inaccurate permanent record of a significant life event. Misspellings I encountered included: "Cocoa-Cola"; "Frist Presbyterian Church"; "Alter Society"; "workekd"; "Catholic Yourth Organization"; "permanantly"; and "auxillary."
A good spell-check program would have caught many or all of the errors cited above. Other mistakes, however, will bypass the spell-check device, because they aren't misspellings. They result from the use of the correctly spelled word in the wrong place.

Some mistakes, unfortunately, are a source of unintentional humor, such as the Albany Times Union obituary that described the deceased as a "35-ear resident of the Capital Region."

Obituary writers and editors also must take care to get straight one of the most basic facts about the deceased: his or her gender. One dropped letter can make a large difference, as in an obituary that used the pronoun "he" on second reference to a deceased woman. Furthermore, I have read an obituary that referred to a man as a widow, found another one that referred to a woman as a husband, and have seen two obituaries that used the courtesy title "Mr." on second reference to a woman.

It is also important to keep in mind that the life of the deceased is now finished. Therefore, any verb forms that indicate that the deceased is acting in the present tense "has lived," "has worked," or "has been in the building business since 1977" are inappropriate.

The families of the deceased and the readers at large deserve a clean, clear account of the deaths of community residents. Whether the newsroom or the advertising department handles obituaries, the resulting copy should have to meet the same standards as information printed elsewhere in the newspaper.
 

CONCLUSIONS

It is clear that charging for obituaries is a practice that is here to stay. A newspaper that has found paid obituaries to be a reliable source of revenue likely will not rescind its fee it is more likely that the newspaper may modify its policy to allow the free publication of several lines or column inches of information about a death. (Furthermore, although rising newsprint costs have been cited as a reason to charge for obituaries, no newspaper seems to take a drop in newsprint prices as a cue to lower or eliminate its obituary fee.) Initial reader opposition to the imposition of an obituary fee appears to have subsided into acceptance, because readers appreciate the opportunity to shape the obituaries of their loved ones.
Of the publications that still print free obituaries, those that are most likely to face the "to charge or not to charge" dilemma are smaller daily newspapers, especially as members of the large baby boom generation begin to age and die. Weekly newspapers do not receive enough obituaries that printing them becomes financially impractical. In the coverage area of metro dailies, on the other hand, so many people die that nobody questions the difficulty of allotting enough space for a free obituary of each one.

I have tried to show how current obituaries depict a bygone era, and it is obvious that future obituaries are going to reflect a far different society. For example, as more women leave and re-enter the workplace in order to accommodate the demands of raising a family, fewer obituaries will state simply, "The deceased was a homemaker." Indeed, people may not have enough room to list all of the places where they have lived or worked.

Obituaries offer us the stories of lives, but few have taken the opportunity to deal openly with death. I hope the passing of the baby boom generation helps raze this taboo. Although the examples I cited earlier show how this can be done in a way that is sensitive to the deceased and to the deceased's family, I think it would be unrealistic to expect a similarly open obituary style to become the norm soon. I do wonder, however, whether the obituaries of the baby boom generation will continue to keep mum. Those Americans born between 1945 and 1964 have helped effect change in race relations, gay rights, child-rearing, politics and sex roles. Surely as the baby boomers age and start dying, they will endorse more candor, not silence, about the end of life.
 

FIVE RECOMMENDATIONS

Newspapers should let readers know up-front whether they charge for obituaries. Practices vary widely: Some newspapers state their obituary policies on their Web site but not on the obituary page. Others do the exact opposite, and many more provide no information at all.

A newspaper may not have the space to provide details about fees and column inches, but anchoring a short statement on the obituary page would help the readers. Readers should not have to hunt for this information at a time when they desperately need it. Furthermore, obituary customers include not only residents of a particular circulation area, but also people from out of town who are not necessarily familiar with each newspaper's policies.

Each newspaper should set and follow obituary standards. Newspapers that charge readers to place obituaries obviously have to give the customer leeway to editorialize or to expound on the virtues of the deceased. However, this does not mean any obituary should be printed "as is" without meeting basic spelling, grammar, punctuation and accuracy requirements.

Obituaries are part of the news record and should be as accurate as possible within the constraints of time and staffing. If it is possible, have someone in the newsroom read each obituary before it is printed; if not, at least make sure everyone who handles obituaries has a grasp of the fundamentals.

Many, if not all, newspapers rely on undertakers to provide obituary information, and many newspapers receive this information via fax or even e-mail. It would be in the best interest of newspaper staff to meet with funeral directors annually and discuss how each could better help the other.  Undertakers, who are more likely than editors to have face-to-face contact with grieving families, could pass on valuable community feedback. Newspaper staff members could benefit from having a few minutes off-deadline to explain what we can and can't do for example, we can't make a fuzzy snapshot of the deceased look like a studio portrait and why some things need to be done a certain way.

The newspaper should set a limit on how many times it will print an obituary, unless the obituary contains a mistake. In the course of my research, I saw one obituary four times in the same newspaper, with no apparent changes. A newspaper that charges for obituaries must strike a balance between its own responsibility to maintain a timely news record and the paying customer's right to control the content and placement of the obituary.

An obituary that contains a mistake should run again in its entirety. Readers clip and save obituaries, and deserve a clean, full-length account for their scrapbooks or family Bibles. This is one time when a newspaper's actions can leave the reader feeling understood at a traumatic time or can generate bad publicity for the newspaper for years after the error sees print. As the Indiana newspaper editor says above, "People don't forget."

 A final consideration: Although many newspapers may not have enough reporters to place one on a full-time obituary beat, they may do well to look at the example of the Portland Press Herald. Each day, a correspondent at the Maine newspaper profiles an obituary subject who made a unique contribution to his or her community. The Press Herald doesn't limit this coverage to politicians or bank presidents: a feature obituary could just as well profile an elderly woman who has attended every home football game played by the local high school for 50 years.  These obituaries show that the newspaper has worked to uncover what William Ketter called "the fascinating tales behind the obituaries."

SOURCES

Correspondence:
Stephanie Law, copy desk chief, Kennebec Journal and Central Maine Morning Sentinel. E-mail correspondence with the author, Sept. 2, 1998.
Dr. John Reed, Kenan Professor of Sociology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. E-mail correspondence with the author. Sept. 22, 1998.

Telephone interviews, September-October 1998
Bo Bryan, advertising manager, Durham Herald-Sun.
Tom Corrigan, metro editor, Greensboro News & Record.
Stephen Fay, Ellsworth American (former managing editor, Brattleboro Reformer).
David Grima, Camden bureau reporter (former community news editor), Courier-Gazette.
William Hawkins, executive editor, Durham Herald-Sun.
Stephanie Law, copy desk chief, Kennebec Journal and Central Maine Morning Sentinel.
Alvin Loftin, obituary department manager, Raleigh News & Observer.
Pat MacDonald, publisher, MacDonald Classified Service.
Richard Macko, publisher, Brattleboro Reformer.
Michael McGuire, executive editor, Courier-Gazette.
Ken Ripley, editor and publisher, Spring Hope Enterprise.
Tonda Rush, counsel, National Newspaper Association.
Elaine Tynan, assistant to the editor, Charlotte Observer.
Ted Vaden, publisher, Chapel Hill News.

Newspapers and magazines:
Canfield, Clarke. "In pursuit of new recruits." Portland Press Herald Jan. 22, 1998, York County Extra: 4E.
Cohen, Todd. "Why not give tax credit where credit for volunteering is due?" Raleigh News & Observer April 21, 1998: D5.
Fitzgerald, Mark. "Tribune Cleared of Sex Bias." Editor & Publisher March 14, 1998: 16.
Giobbe, Dorothy. "Charging for Obituaries." Editor & Publisher Aug. 12, 1995: 11.
Ketter, William. "News-for-pay is no way to go." The American Editor Dec. 1995: 2.
"Last Chance as Best Choice; Obits tapped to boost reader appeal." Presstime Sept. 1998: 12.
Levine, Suzanne Braun. "My secret predawn rite." Newsweek Aug. 4, 1997: 12.
Noah, Timothy. "For newspapers, the obit pages aren't sad." U.S. News & World Report April 7, 1997: 58.
"Obits: A lasting tribute." Sharon Herald  May 1996.
Starkey, Shawn, "Obits sell papers in retirement town." Sharon Herald May 9, 1996.

Obituary research:
Albany Times Union: Jan. 1-Jan. 7, 1995; April 1-April 7, 1995; Oct. 1-Oct. 7, 1995.
Durham Herald-Sun: Jan. 1-Jan. 7, 1995; April 1-April 7, 1998; Oct. 1-Oct. 7, 1998.
Providence Journal-Bulletin: Jan. 1-Jan. 7, 1995; April 1-April 7, 1995; Oct. 1-Oct. 7, 1995.
Raleigh News & Observer: Jan. 1-Jan. 7, 1998; April 1-April 7, 1998; Oct. 1-Oct. 7, 1998.